richard develyn's page

Further to JJ's comment here:

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page=631?Ask-James-Jacobs-ALL-your-Qu estions-Here#31535

w.r.t. the saves rather than whether gibbering should be sonic, could we please have the DC changes made in the faq.

It is a pretty big difference to the challenge difficulty of a Gibbering Mouther.

Many thanks

Richard

You're probably thinking of the pre-3E market research by Wizards of the Coast, which revealed that most campaigns only last 6 months or so.

I'm sure you're right. I wonder what the reasons for this are and what's happening now.

@Vic: Please excuse me posting one more time on this discussion Scott and I have been having but I'll keep it brief.

@Scott: My perception of the risk of adventuring is different to yours. I know the game is played a bit differently now but I think that an adventuring group that thinks, plans, invests in healing and defence and, most importantly, knows when to run away, has a pretty good survival rate. Furthermore, the rewards in terms of ensuring future survivability (money and levels) makes the risk worthwhile, whereas forsaking this by going up levels of commoner or expert could well, in the long term, be a more risky strategy for longevity. Only my opinion, of course, and I'm sure we can agree to differ.

Richard

It's pointless asking me why I might expect a trend to change when neither of us have any idea what that trend has been.

The only survey-based fact that I have ever heard, and I can't remember where it was, was that most gaming groups only last 6 months or so.

Even then, I might be wrong, however if you know of any statistical analysis along these lines that we can all look at then please point in the right direction.

The reason that I am concerned about GM shortage is because I think over the last 10+ years or so GMing enjoyment has been sacrificed for the sake of player enjoyment.

I've been GMing since 1979, and I certainly feel that way from my own experience. I love all of Paizo's material, but I love it much more as a player than as a GM. I've changed from someone who used to be happy to GM constantly to someone who would rather play than GM, though I'm happy do my fair share of GMing both for the sake of the group and because I enjoy it as long as I'm not doing it all the time.

This is entirely on the basis of my own personal experience, which is all I am qualified to comment on, nothing to do with underlying logical factors or world-spanning charts or examples. If my experience is typical, then I *feel* that there is a danger that good GMs will start to become harder and harder to come by.

And if I'm in any way right, then I think that gaming companies, like Paizo, need to try to look ahead 5 or 10 years to see if there is a trend. And if there is, and there may well not be, and I might be completely wrong, but *if* there is, then I think that the game needs to start repositioning itself a little bit towards a more gestalt approach to players and GM, where GMs are seen more as the "keepers of secrets" for a given module rather than anything with any more power or accountability, and where it is expected that the role of GM will rotate between the members of the group.

Richard

I don't think that the GM population is in any danger of abandoning Paizo due to a perception that not enough setting material is being produced. As we've noted, they're churning out more setting material than just about any other company right now. Even if the GMs did decide to jump ship (and they won't, because Paizo is meeting or exceeding their needs), they'd have no better option to turn to.

Well, you're speaking as *every* GM now, and I don't think you know any more than I.

I think the biggest danger to this game will come through a GM shortage crisis. I, personally, reached the decision after the last 6 years of solid GMing that GMing was half-work-half-fun and playing was all-fun, so I announced to my group that I was no longer prepared to do it all and we now have a round-robin system which more and more players are joining in with. In my opinion, this was the best decision I ever made, because now we share the responsibility for rules policing, interpretation, judgement, and for everyone having a good time around the table, as well as sharing the work. I believe that in time this will happen more and more. I honestly think that's the future of the game.

Of course I know there are plenty of people out there right now who will be prepared to GM full time forever, though not always for the right reasons, I have to say. However I think that there will be a gradual movement towards GM sharing which might even eventually reach the stage where if you're not prepared to take your turn as GM you will find it difficult finding a group that's prepared to carry you along as a player.

Just my opinion, though!

Richard

I hope so because that small segment of Paizo's customers, the GMs, whose purchasing power is less than 20% of the player segment, is still vital for the game to happen (unless all the player segment is interested in doing is rolling up characters without playing them).

Richard

I would like to add a cautionary note or two against rule-bloat.

Being a simulationist style player, the rules and the gaming world for me are inextricably linked.

When a new rule comes out that enables a PC to do something new, unless there's a good reason not to that means that every suitable NPC in the world can also do it. Which then means that the world has to react and change in the light of this new ability that has now become available.

The rules are like the physical laws of the universe. They drive what the world looks like. The more rules you have, however, the harder it is to understand their repercussions, and if you don't understand their repercussions you are in danger of making parts of your world nonsensical.

Or at least in need of change if you want it to be, in its own way, believable.

Rules bloat can also make adventure writing more difficult. The last thing any of us would like to see is disclaimers on adventures along the lines of "at the time of writing, this module provided a suitable challenge for four characters of Nth level as long as they included someone with the ability to do X but *not* someone able to do Y!"

Just my 2 cents worth

Richard

Does section 15 of a product produced using the Paizo Publishing, LLC Pathfinder® Roleplaying Game Compatibility License have to include copyright notices for all of the products listed in Exhibit B?

Richard

I'm a bit confused about what might or might not be allowed within the compatibility licence with regards to citations of other Paizo products.

For example, if you look at this amazon link:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pathfinder-Campaign-Setting-Monsters-Revisited/dp/1 601254733/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350429531&sr=8-1-fkmr1

- you'll see Mystery Monsters Revisited described under Book Description in a manner which I understand comes under the classification of a "citation".

Would that paragraph break the terms of the compatibility licence if it was in such a product, because it would be termed a reference rather than a citation?

Personally, what I would like to do (although it's not mega-important), is to have a citation along the lines of "Brazen Medusas are described in detail in Mythical Monsters Revisited by Paizo Publishing LLC" but I'm sort of scratching my head about whether that would be ok according to the licence or not.

Richard

What if the horse was stationary?

And you knelt on it?

What if it was stuffed?

Richard

There was a dungeon in Dungeon (3.5 days) where the para-elemental plane of Ooze had broken through into a city's sewer systems.

The gateway was two-way.

I was GM, and I tried to give plenty of clues as the party tried swimming through the stuff - "the sewerage is getting thicker and thicker, it feels like muddy water, maybe treacle, thick treacle ..."

6 out of 8 party members decided to go for it anyway.

Players (after realising they're not breaking through the stuff): "Can we get back?"

Me: "I suppose there's a chance you might just stumble across the gateway again if you try "swimming" in what you reckon might be the way you came ....."

We rolled some dice. They didn't come back.

Richard

I'll tell you the most evil thing I did as a GM:

The party opens a door into a room covered by magical darkness - of the deepest kind. A voice speaks from within:

"Please do not bring any light into this room as my gaze has a curse that it turns all it falls upon to ashes. There is an exit from the room at this end, however you must walk straight across if you are to avoid taking damage from trapped areas of brown mold under the floor."

There are, indeed, areas of trapped brown mold under the floor, which can be detected even through the darkness. However floating in the middle of the room is a sphere of annihilation.

The voice, of course, is just a magic mouth. Most of the party trusted it, even when they gathered that others were disappearing they just thought it was some sort of teleportal. Two players didn't trus it - they went around the room and found a mouldy skeleton on an old throne with a scepter and a crown. One put on the crown (loony) and thence gained the ability to turn people to ashes with his gaze, which he subsequently did to the other.

It was a very long time ago, and was my homage to Tomb of Horrors.

To my mind being *evil* as a GM is setting up situations where characters get themselves killed but can only blame themselves.

Another situation I set up when I was thinking along similar lines was having an imp being rude and unpleasant (but not attacking) players by the door to a room, then having the owning magic user have his most powerful death spell ready on the other side for the second the players opened the door. The players had simply forgotten that an imp can be a magic-user's familiar.

Richard

Could I suggest you consider a First World book next?

I'd like to see something about amoral races - or races which simply consider humanoidkind too lowly to be worth bothering about. Like Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies.

Richard

As a general request, I'd like to see a sidebar suggesting ways to extend an AP, possibly by linking in with other Pathfinder modules, for those of us who prefer to run their campaigns at a slower level progression rate.

More specifically with this AP, it would be great if it could be combined with Serpent Skull in some way to make it a 12 part classic.

Richard

What is the smallest viable humanish settlement on Golarion - a day or more's distance from a city?

What do the smaller habitations tend to look like in the wilderness? Do they tend to be open or, at the very least, surrounded with ditches, moats, pallisades, etc?

Might you, for example, find a village of 50 or so souls eking (sp?) out an existence somewhere in the Cairnlands?

Richard